Date: 12 August 2025

Contemporary artists Squidsoup and Liz West are set to exhibit a range of immersive works at York Art Gallery in a brand-new installation entitled Future Tense: Art in the Age of Transformation, running from 19 September 2025 – 25 January 2026. 

Squidsoup is an artist collective who create immersive digital installations utilising light, sound, and space. Their interactive installations often explore the relationship between technology and human perception. Submergence, included in the Gallery’s exciting displays, was longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize in 2015 and has since been exhibited on six continents across more than 100 locations. This installation features over 8,000 individually suspended LEDs providing a sensory experience unfolding over a 12-minute rotation. It seamlessly blends the boundaries between human and digital landscapes, exploring presence, connectivity, and the idea of self in an increasingly digital age.  

Liz West, another Aesthetica Art Prize finalist, this time in 2016, also uses light and colour to create rich, immersive, and interactive displays. The installation that will feature at York Art Gallery this September draws primarily on mathematician and physicist Isaac Newton’s experiments with light refraction through prisms. Titled Our Spectral Vision, and commissioned by the Natural History Museum, the work creates a vivid immersive environment that mixes luminous colour and radiant light using a mixture of LED lamps and dichroic glass in the form of seven prisms. Our Spectral Vision explores individual relationships and understandings of colour. West’s works evoke moments of reflection and optimism in wonderous explorations of light and colour which can bring people together in a fragmentary modern world.  

Running throughout the autumn and winter of 2025, Future Tense is an exhibition dedicated to celebrating contemporary artists, presented alongside the Aesthetica Art Prize throughout the ground floor of York Art Gallery. As both Liz West and Squidsoup have come through the Aesthetica Art Prize, displaying Future Tense alongside the Art Prize highlights its role as a vital platform for talent development and cultural innovation. Far more than simply a competition, the Prize is a hub for creative dialogue, activism and visionary thinking that transcends borders and disciplines. Both exhibitions promise a range of media, from painting and photography to sculpture, mixed media and video installations.  

York, as a proud member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, celebrates new and ground-breaking installations which demonstrate the creativity and innovation of contemporary artists. Collaborative exhibitions such as Future Tense and the Aesthetica Art Prize are vital for showcasing artworks that directly confront the challenges faced by the modern world and aid the united development of art, technology and activism in a public-facing platform. Art provides a productive space for initiating conversations, forming ideas and portraying visions of a sustainable and equitable future. 

Cherie Frederico, Director of Aesthetica, who curated the display in collaboration with York Museums Trust, commented: “These works encourage transformative conversations that span cultures, disciplines, and communities, underscoring the essential role of art in addressing the challenges of our time. In addition to showcasing cutting-edge art, Future Tense offers visitors an immersive experience that transcends traditional exhibition formats. The dynamic installations create spaces where visitors are not merely observers but active participants in the unfolding narrative of change and possibility. This engagement embodies the spirit of the exhibition: art as a living, evolving dialogue that invites reflection, connection, and action.” 

Livia Turnbull, Curator of Contemporary Art at York Art Gallery, stated: “Both Liz West and Squidsoup are outstanding practitioners creating engaging and thoughtful artwork that can be physically experienced and interacted with. The ground floor spaces in York Art Gallery will be transformed for our visitors into immersive environments, with experimental uses of light and sound. This is a lovely opportunity to welcome back artists who have previously been nominated for the Aesthetica Art Prize, demonstrating the importance of talent development platforms in shaping cultural conversations.” 

Future Tense: Art in the Age of Transformation will run from 19 September 2025 – 25 January 2026 at York Art Gallery, alongside the Aesthetica Art Prize. Both are included in general admission which can be booked in advance on the Gallery’s website.